Kiro didn't flinch—not when the first warrior stepped forward, not even when the second dragged a sword made of marrow across the stone with a screech that sounded like a dying god. His eyes scanned them—six in total, each larger than him, their bodies slick with coagulated power and warped history.
"Let me guess," he muttered, raising his fists, "if I bleed, I lose?"
Adim folded his arms behind his back, eyes narrowing. "Quite the opposite. If you don't bleed, you're still asleep."
Kiro exhaled slowly, reaching for the tension in his spine like an old friend. His muscles ached, his veins itched. There was no system interface here—no quests, no notifications, no stats.
Just instinct. Memory. Rage.
The first warrior lunged, faster than any beast Kiro had faced in Velmora. A blood-forged axe came down, whistling through the thick air. Kiro sidestepped, grabbed the warrior's wrist, and drove his elbow into its throat with a sickening crunch.
It didn't fall.
It grinned.
And then, it bled—not just red, but black and gold, as if its blood remembered empires.
Kiro leapt back. "Right," he muttered. "Nothing dies easy here."
The others moved together, a wall of violence and bone. Kiro moved with them—ducking, striking, twisting between blades that sang in unnatural tongues. The ground beneath him pulsed like a heartbeat, reacting to every drop of spilled blood.
He struck one in the gut, then turned and broke another's jaw with his knee. But for every one he staggered, two more pressed forward. Their faces didn't change. They weren't angry.
They were testing.
As if they were mirrors.
As if they knew him.
"You were never made for stillness," Adim called out, watching from atop a tower that hadn't existed a moment before. "You were made for hunger. For pain. For becoming."
"I didn't ask to become anything!" Kiro shouted, grabbing a spear and ramming it through one warrior's chest.
"No one does," Adim said. "Not even gods."
Kiro's arms trembled. He fell to one knee, panting. The blood beneath his feet began to rise in tendrils, crawling over his skin, whispering to him in voices he couldn't understand.
He saw flashes.
A woman screaming as flames rose behind her.
A child's hand slipping from his own.
A field of crosses under two moons.
He screamed and struck the ground. The blood answered.
A geyser of crimson surged upward, slamming into the warriors and hurling them away like ragdolls. Kiro stood, his body glowing faintly—not with power, but with remembrance. The system was here after all—not in numbers, but in purpose.
Adim watched, unmoving. "Good. The Blood remembers. Now… show me the rest."
The city twisted again, towers bending like bone caught in fire. More shapes emerged—not warriors, but memories, half-formed and rotting: soldiers from the Kruger strike team he'd fought, his mother's empty face, the shadows of Voidlings, laughing.
Kiro's fists clenched. He was tired of being tested. Tired of being hunted.
"I will wake up," he said, stepping into the swarm.
Not because he wanted to.
Because there were still cities that needed burning. Empires that needed breaking.
And gods—old, quiet gods—who needed reminding that he was still coming.
[Meanwhile – Jiji's Clinic, Krugo]
Jiji hovered beside the stasis bed, arms crossed, sipping what may have been coffee or engine coolant. He glanced at the glowing veins under Kiro's skin and muttered to himself, "If this kid explodes, I'm billing El'Vertigo double."
The medical monitors flickered, one displaying strange runes before melting into static.
Kiro twitched once. Just once.
And the blood machine next to him burst.
Jiji sighed, reached for his tools, and muttered, "Yep. Definitely not dead. Just cosmically constipated."